Archives for October, 2007

on the fire suicides of the buddhists "They only burn themselves to reach Paradise." Mme. Nhu original courage is good, motivation be damned, and if you say they are trained to feel no pain, are they guaranteed this? is is still not possible to die for somebody else? you sophisticates who lay back and make…

Events 1977 – The last natural case of smallpox was discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox. 1984 – "Baby Fae" receives a heart transplant from a baboon. 1994 – Announcement that Andrew Wiles correctly proved Fermat’s last theorem.

Over at Page 3.14, there’s a post where us old farts reminisce about computing when we were young ’uns. I’m quoted as saying "My first computer was a ZX81 (Timex/Sinclair here in the US). Had 1k of memory. Taught myself assembly. In high school and college, virtually everything was hand written. Didn’t even use a…

One result from a Barna Group poll on biblical literalism: The Bible opens with the description of God creating the universe in six days. That report is accepted as literally true by 60% of the adult population. This passage brought out major distinctions across people groups. For instance, while 73% of the adults who did…

According the Associated Press, the White House severely edited congressional testimony given Tuesday by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on the impact of climate change on health. The testimony was cut from 14 pages to four, though some of the redacted material appears to have come up in questions. The…

Good Monday morning to all my readers, especially to the 406 who read the blog via Feedburner. Did you know, that if each and everyone of you donated a mere $10 to our DonorsChoose drive, we’d have raised a total of $5,353 and will have met our challenge goals? That’s less than three cents a…